Özet:

Recent works in the philosophy of science has led to a revival of Aristotelian approaches to the physical sciences. Historically, Aristotelian approaches to the sciences in the Islamic tradition have been opposed to God’s working miracles in ways that do not conform to the laws of nature. This paper presents an approach from the thought of Said Nursi (1877-1960) and the thought of Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) to show that an Aristotelian approach to causality in nature and God’s miraculous action are not necessarily inherently opposed. First, this paper examines Said Nursi’s mânâ-yı harfî perspective in order to show Nursi’s reasoning for why the laws of nature are not inviolable. These arguments go hand-in-hand with Nursi’s Ash’arite, occasionalistic denial of authentically created causality, the arguments for which will be briefly considered. The first part will also generate some criteria by which to judge an Aristotelian approach against that of a believer in God’s miraculous action. In this paper, three criteria are posited to apply Nursi’s mânâ-yı harfî perspective outside of his Ash’arite understanding of divine causality with respect to creatures. The first criterion is that creatures consist of a transparent sign to the divine (largely through teleology). The second is that any scientific or physical explanation of creatures without reference to God will always be radically incomplete, missing the most important metaphysical aspect of their relationship to God. The third is that, in reality, creatures are completely dependent upon God for all of their operations and without His constant action, they can do nothing. As a conclusion to the first part, Nursi’s theology of the one Creator possessing the only causality is examined, placing a theological obstacle to creaturely causality: putatively sharing a divine attribute. Next, the paper briefly puts the question of Aristotelian natures in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in the context of the medieval debate between al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd on whether the actions of nature occur with necessity or by the divine will. Then, the paper outlines an approach from the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas to suggest that the intimacy with which God is involved in the natural and miraculous action of the cosmos is sympathetic to Nursi’s mânâ-yı harfî, even if the two approaches cannot be fully harmonized. Exploring St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of esse and the complete dependence of creatures on God’s constant causality, this paper shows that creatures are incapable of doing anything by themselves apart from divine causality. This metaphysical dependence on God allows St. Thomas’s thought to qualify for all three criteria of the mânâ-yı harfî perspective outside of the Ash’arite denial of creaturely causality. The paper concludes by addressing two objections to this account. The first addresses possible confusion of creature and Creator in a participative metaphysics, which Nursi’s position would imply, but is held by other figures like Mulla Sadra. The second objection is the question of human freedom and moral responsibility. The paper responds to the first objection by showing the clear and unequivocal distinction between the creature and the Creator. It responds to the second objection by pointing to both Nursi’s Ash’arite response to the question of freedom and divine causation and St. Thomas Aquinas’s solution to divine causality and human freedom to show that both are reasonable accounts of a heavily-involved God in the causality of creatures, achieving equivalent goals. Thus, this paper offers the beginning of a metaphysical alternative to Ash’arite metaphysics which nonetheless preserves God’s intimate connection to creaturely action and God’s miraculous action in the universe. While not claiming that both accounts can be reconciled, this paper addresses the similar concerns of both authors with different metaphysical commitments, showing that Nursi’s arguments against autonomous creaturely causality and the larger debate about natures do not address St. Thomas Aquinas’s transformed Aristotelianism, with the latter presenting a live option for non-Ash’arites sympathetic to the issues of divine involvement with the cosmos.